GUNS AND AMMUNITION. 



375 



judgment, and at first flush strikes us as 

 the ideal. Yet its place is at the bottom 

 of the list. You must have experience 

 with this gun to discover its weakness. 

 So much is claimed for it that we are 

 likely to buy it on its looks, as the farmer 

 buys gold bricks. We want to try a gun 

 that will shoot anything from the conical 

 flobert to the long rifle cartridge; so we 

 buy it and a lot of assorted ammunition, 

 and proceed to try the long rifle cartridge. 

 It shoots beautifully; not, of course, so ac- 

 curately as a gun twisted to the proper 

 turn for that particular cartridge, but it 

 shoots the cartridge and passes it through 

 the magazine all right. Presently a shell 

 misses fire. You throw down the lever to 

 eject it. You see the shell fly out; pow- 

 der is scattered about. You are surprised, 

 but you have already closed your lever 

 and another cartridge is in the chamber. 

 You shoot and you get a swelled barrel. 

 The reason is that the bullet of the first 

 cartridge was not extracted. It remained 

 in the barrel while the shell pulled away 

 from it and scattered powder through the 

 action. A little more such experience will 

 convince you that no repeating rifle can 

 handle the long rifle cartridge, and that 

 that cartridge should never be used in a 

 repeating rifle. The shell is not crimped 

 tightly enough on the bullet to draw the 

 bullet out in ejecting. 



You know by experience that you can 

 get no good results from the 22 long, and 

 so you tie to the old reliable 22 short. 

 You find the gun shoots them excellently 

 for distances from 10 to 100 yards. You 

 will find difficulty, however, in shooting 

 the head off a snake close at hand, and 

 you wonder why. After satisfying your- 

 self that the gun positively will not shoot 

 true close at hand, it begins to dawn on 

 you that the trouble is with the short 

 twist in the barrel. It spins the ball like 

 a top; the vibrations being at their widest 

 about 10 feet from the muzzle. Your 

 snake has a chance to bite you or to get 

 away. You try to pump your magazine 

 dry on him, but at the third or fourth 

 pump something jams in the action. You 

 shake it and work the lever. No use. 

 You are dead stuck. You let that snake 

 go, and fall to taking off the side plate 

 of your gun. The plate off, you are as- 

 tounded to see 2, 3, 4, or more cartridges 

 in the action. You also find after a little 

 time that the habit of letting 2 or more 

 cartridges back into the action is growing 

 on the gun. Investigation reveals that 

 the lower edge of the carrier is worn 

 against the lever; worn already, before 

 500 cartridges are used, and the gun is 

 practically useless in consequence. You 

 have already found that in using the 22 

 short this same gun sheds nearly as much 



gas out into the action as it does from 

 the muzzle, making constant cleaning of 

 the action necessary. This is because the 

 gun is chambered for the long rifle cart- 

 ridge, a case of misfit. 



Is the task of making a satisfactory 22 

 repeater insuperable? Can it not be done? 

 Are the manufacturers satisfied with their 

 present work? The enterprise of the 

 Winchester Company ought to do some- 

 thing for us here. If they will only put 

 a lever and a rigid fore end on their '90 

 model they will earn our undying grati- 

 tude, to say nothing of our shekels. 



Chas. S. Wheeler. 



THE ARMY RECORD OF THE SMALL BORE. 



The report of Lieut. T. B. Mott, 73d 

 Artillery, inspector of small arms practice 

 of the Department of the East, to the War 

 Department, has just been made public. 

 It covers the small arms practice in the 

 Department of the East for the past year. 



The report says: "No sharpshooter 

 using the rifle made 85 per cent, of the 

 possible score. Many of the averages 

 were below 50 per cent., both with the 

 rifle and the carbine. With the carbine 

 only 22 men in the department qualified as 

 sharpshooters, and only 2 of that number 

 had scores above 80 per cent. With the 

 rifle 27 men qualified, one man making 

 84.25 per cent.; but the remainder fell be- 

 low 80 per cent." 



Though much of this poor showing may 

 have been due to the inefficiency of re- 

 cruits, an unusual number having been en- 

 listed the past 2 years, yet that cause alone 

 could not have lowered the percentage to 

 the above figures. In all previous reports 

 of small arm practice when the 45 was 

 handled by green men, the scores did not 

 fall so low. 



As to the killing and stopping power of 

 the small bore, all reports from the front 

 prove that a wound from the Mauser or 

 Krag Jorgensen does not put a man hors 

 de combat. And if the power of the small 

 bore is not adequate to disable a man, how 

 much less would it operate against a large 

 animal. 



For my part, in stopping an elephant, 

 a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros or a buffalo, 

 I would trust to my 8 gauge rifle; for bear, 

 moose, and elk, to my 50 caliber; for wild- 

 cat, panther, wolf, caribou, and deer, to 

 my 45; for woodchuck and fox, to my 38; 

 for beaver, skunk, and opossum, to my 32; 

 for squirrels, rabbits, and quail, to my 25; 

 and for rats, weasels, and mink, to my 22. 



It is not entirely the range which makes 

 a hunting weapon; no one would use a 

 long range target rifle for hunting game. 

 Extreme accuracy is required for range 

 work, while killing power is the thing de- 



